Glassdoor.com, which enables companies’ employees to torch airline and other CEOs like United Airlines’ Glenn Tilton, has no plans to syndicate any of its user-generated content to TripAdvisor, which is mulling introducing flight reviews.
But, TripAdvisor, a unit of Expedia, certainly would take Glassdoor.com’s phone calls about partnerships because TripAdvisor co-founder and CEO Stephen Kaufer is a member of the Glassdoor.com board.
And, Glassdoor co-founder and CEO Robert Hohman, most previously president of Expedia’s Hotwire and part of the crew in 1999 which took Expedia public, rounds out an Expedia-heavy, dream-team board — we’ve heard that dream team pitch before — with Glassdoor co-founder and chairman Richard Barton (who founded Expedia) and Erik Blachford, who took the reins at Expedia when Barton left.
Hohman, Kaufer, Barton and Blachford don’t publicly market themselves as any kind of travel industry or Expedia dream team.
And Glassdoor, which also has directors with no travel industry ties, in fact, enables employees in any industry, not just travel, to rant or rave about their companies and CEOs and to contribute information about employees’ salaries.
You have to give this IAC- and Expedia-connected fraternity credit for embracing user-generated content and letting the chips fall where they may regarding consumers’ opinions. (Hohman, Kaufer and Blachford all have IAC/Expedia ties.)
On that note, my opinion is that Glassdoor seems to have a glass-ceiling issue as all the directors on this, albeit talented, old-boys- network board appear, from the looks of it, to be white men. (However, three industry advisors to the board are women.)
About the business itself, Kaufer of TripAdvisor apparently conveyed some lessons about user-generated content and the media business when Glassdoor launched in beta in 2008 as a spokeswoman says that “Glassdoor was able to capitalize on a number of TripAdvisor learnings during its initial development.”
Apparently, Glassdoor won’t face authenticity issues to the degree that TripAdvisor does at times because Glassdoor says it verifies users’ company e-mail addresses before publishing their anonymous comments.
On the other hand, what stops a company from pressuring, prodding or coaxing employees to write favorable reviews?
Meanwhile, the Hohman, Kaufer, Barton and Blachford mash-up doesn’t escape the scrutiny of their respective companies’ employees in Glassdoor.com reviews.
Hohman of Glassdoor gets an eyebrow-raising 100% approval rating (with only seven published reviews); 94% approve of TripAdvisor’s Kaufer, 81% approve of Zillow’s Barton, and there is only one review of Blachford at TerraPass so he gets a pass for now.
In this era of Glassdoor transparency, CEOs can’t hide, and must perform.
[...] Kaufer, Barton, Blachford, Hohman take a shine to Glassdoor.com [...]